Yachting: Barker loses lead and finals place

Emirates Team NZ missed out on the final. Photo / Chris Cameron, ETNZ

Oracle Racing's Jimmy Spithill beat series leader Dean Barker and Emirates Team New Zealand to reach the finals of the America's Cup World Series match racing championship in San Diego.

Spithill, the defending America's Cup champion, beat overall series leader Dean Barker and Emirates Team New Zealand in two races yesterday to set up a best-of-three final against France's Energy Team today. Energy Team beat Sweden's Artemis Racing, skippered by American Terry Hutchinson, in both of their semifinal races.

Sailed in fast, 45-foot catamarans with wing sails, the ACWS is a prelude to the 2013 America's Cup, which will be sailed in 72-foot cats on San Francisco Bay. This is the first America's Cup racing in the United States since Russell Coutts, now the CEO of Oracle's sailing team, led Team New Zealand to a five-race sweep of Dennis Conner off San Diego in 1995. The wing sails, which look and operate like aeroplane wings, replace traditional soft-sail rigs. They're an offshoot of the radical, 223-foot wing sail that powered Oracle's trimaran in the 2010 America's Cup.

The wing sail on the 45-foot catamaran "is creating a lot more lift than a normal soft sail does, for a lot less load," Oracle trimmer Dirk de Ridder said.

"Sailing like today, it would be around three tons of mainsheet tension, vertically, and now we have about 200 kilos of side load to deal with. So the trimming is much more accurate and much more direct than it would be on a soft sail. It's much easier. I like the wing because it's very responsive." While it was a good day for Oracle Racing in the matchup of heavyweight sailing teams, it wasn't for the Kiwis, the series leader coming into San Diego.

They were hoping to reach the match racing finals for the third straight ACWS regatta. Team New Zealand lost to Spithill in the finals in Cascais, Portugal, before beating Team Korea in Plymouth, England.

"We just clearly didn't sail anywhere near the level we needed to today, and against opposition like that, you can't afford to sail badly," Barker said. "For whatever reason, we just had a bad day."

- AP